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http://blog.janicehardy.com/2015/05/why … iters.html

Using this? Give me your opinion on Microsoft ONENOTE for writing 30K-50K word novels. TX

Orlando, LGBT folks dumbfounded nation wide, consumers of mass-media Googled-eyed, a kid with a machine gun and ego problems, a self-proclaimed savior with orange hair, 50+ Americans very -VERY- dead, 50+ very -VERY- wounded, thousands of relatives and friends grieving and then there is the NRA. The same gun was used at Sandy Hook to kill 20 first graders... Shame on all of us. And of course there is Hillary proclaiming common sense in these uncommon and dangerous times. Polarized values and despair, and with no resolution in sight it seems to me. And yet some writer is going to pull the world through this mess. I'm thinking it will be a big novel like 'The Grapes of Wrath', a novel like that opened the eyes of a myopic America and defined the sufferings of people who put the food on our tables during the 1930s. Many of those American people suffer horrible deaths, starvation, etc. in those heady times... until Steinbeck put those unseen problems in their blind but heady heads.

A bestseller lurks in this present morass of American dysfunctions.  Obvious evil in Orlando is easy to see and define in narratives for journalists and talking heads; the good guys or gals... eh, not so easy to spell out for us creative writers. If I were going for a novel to define this I might pick a young woman with gender identity problems at this nightclub for the love of a confused and angry man; her with an IQ at 160+ destined for an Ivy League college; a young and hopeful Olympian in swimming; of hard-working but regrettably blue-collar Republican parents; and at The Pulse nightclub because she loves the shooter, wants to save him, thinks she knows his problems & allegiances and is trying desperately to stop him... all in vain. In the end I would keep her alive, bullet ridden, but very -VERY- brain dead.

A million fiction scenarios exist for this tragic and perhaps defining moment in American history. Nevertheless, the defining moment of mass-slaughter for even larger groups of innocent Americas, using these high-profit assault weapons, may still be on the bloody horizon... to assault our senses and sensibilities and sympathies.

I might name this novel: Of Nonsense, Of No Sensibilities, & Of Mass-Slaughter: A pastoral romance like Jane Austin's combined with a nuked-up & paranoid Tom Clancy plot and with a bit of Adolf Schickelgruber (a crazy billionaire character/politician with orange hair and a skewed philosophy) tossed in.

Literary fiction exists to dig us out of messes like this. Break out your Bics, picks & shovels!

Big spies in novels, movies, etc., that glorify the spy who saves the world... Bond, Ludlum characters, etc... But there is the little spy, the man or woman who pretends to be a customer at a large store, but is really spying on the employee for the company. Talk about "toe the line" or else. What an interesting character study: weasel or company savior or ?

Here is a character who sees into various individuals personalities and problems, people who must follow the company policies, but what else might this company spy see? When you look too closely at any individual the lines get blurred, as everyone has a secret. I was thinking a company spy might uncover a murder/murderer and then this exposed murderer realizes he (or she) is discovered then learns who the company spy is, or thinks he knows and then...

Any books or films run this type of plot?

The action-adventure genre must change now that the Republican Party in the USA is fragmented with the invention of a third entity: The King Donald Party. My God, a ginormous wall between Mexico and America ???... In many ways this almost mirrors the ice wall in Game of Thrones. The liberals and Democrats are now therefore recast as wind-walkers and worse. And, as it is in game of thrones; our political divisions in right-wing America almost mirror National Socialist Germany and Facist Italy of the 1920s-1930s. But remember, they both went down in flames and to me that is where good A&A starts... during or after the conflagrations! Before the conflagrations... go to Literary FIction forum.

A polarization of mean & nasty motives must exist in the A&A genre to make it work; good guys, bad guys and helpless victims in jeopardy. Many times, in this genre, the good guys are really the bad guys, and visa versa. To me, one interesting twist is to make the victim (or victim mentality) the bad guy, who through dramatic irony the reader realizes, at the crucial moment in the story they've been duped. Both HItler and Mussolini were deemed by millions as good guys casting the underdog masses as victims (i.g., The Donald), but only repudiated after it was too late, after millions were unknowingly escorted into the hells of concentration and extermination camps.

Without politics, religion, family values (etc.) in the background of a A&A story it becomes a televised sporting event with the sound turned down and way too many commercials.

Of course, the wicked guy can tie Nell to the tracks and then saving her can be the only story arc; you shit your pants in excitement, but learn nothing about the evil men or women. The backgrounds of Snidley Whiplash and Dudley Doright represent two elements/characters of the polarization of morals and ethics in law & order society that inquiring minds want to know about.

My God... think of this: An evil Dudley Doright! THe mind boggles at this thought! He allows the train to run Nell over... wow! I am truly evil minded, I guess.

Any and all political or religious writing is welcome in this group forum, but it MUST pertain to writing fiction also.